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The data are clear: The boys are not all right

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#41

Post by rhino369 »

frankbreetz wrote: post #5

>>Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. I wonder how much of this is because more women are joining the workforce. If men are leaving the workforce by their own free will because their wife is working and they are staying home with the kids, both of these facts could be true, but seems like a win in both gender equality ter…

I think its more that they are dropping out and playing Xbox than dropping out and watching the kids.

I'm not sure I blame them. If I had no prospects of a wife or kids, I'd quit my job and argue with people on the internet in my dad's basement too.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#42

Post by Jtsummers »

Spooky23 wrote: post #26

Of course. We treat females like they are a marginalized minority. My son’s school has a “Girls Can Code” program. All collateral features women and girls. (Boys are welcome though) I worked at a place where a C-level executive hosted company endorsed dinners at her home for female managers to mentor them for executive roles. If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wo…

> If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wouldn’t end well.

Maybe not, but nearly every Users Group I've attended may as well have been a men's IT society for all the women I've seen attend, despite specific outreach efforts to get them there.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#43

Post by BitwiseFool »

commandlinefan wrote: post #29

> As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Conversely: as young men's potential future employability rises, their romantic prospects also decline. That is - the men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.

I'm one of these men and I hope this actually works out in the end. I sense that men also have a biological clock but we can reassure ourselves that we can keep putting off settling down because of the biological reality of male reproduction. If I just get a little more successful, then I will be more attractive in courtship. But the thing is, you lose track of time really quickly. And, it is quite the bootstrapping problem to catch up on romantic social skills that you didn't cultivate earlier in life. Being awkward around women in High School is a given, but as a thirty-something it can be profoundly uncomfortable and off-putting.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#44

Post by csa »

salawat wrote: post #30
coldtea wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how much of this is because more women are joining the workforce. If men are leaving the workforce by their own free will because their wife is working and they are staying home with the kids, both of these facts could be true Not what's happening. For one, marriages are decreasing too and marriage age increases.

Legal marriage is decreasing. You can draw on more benefits as single from the System. Legal marriage also leads to pathological complications in terms of seperation in some states.

> Legal marriage also leads to pathological complications in terms of seperation in some states.

This cannot be overstated.

True even with a prenup.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#45

Post by gtsop »

dang wrote: post #14

Here's the full Orwell quote. People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a d…

No post body was provided.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#46

Post by lph »

Andrew Yang makes some good points in this piece, particularly about positive masculinity and role models. Whether fair or not, the perception that the left is hostile to men has driven recruitment for the far right, and that merits some reflection.

But he's also really facile about underlying economic causes. It's easy to blame problems on "our culture has been broken by the wokes!", but many of the problems of young men are not unique to them. Fewer women are entering college, also. Women are dropping out of the workforce, also. More young women are living with their parents, also. Is that because they lacked strong masculine role models?

Or is it because the rising costs of college, housing, healthcare, and living have made the traditional path much less attainable? Absent fathers didn't do that. These are the same patterns you see in any country with a shrinking economy; it's just a shock to Americans who feel they were promised better.

(In summary: Maybe Andrew Yang should spend more time talking to Bernie Sanders)

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#47

Post by TimTheTinker »

photochemsyn wrote: post #15
Santosh83 wrote: post #2

Effect of dwindling & non-existent male role models and more importantly, fathers.

There's little evidence for that kind of causality. Economic stability, on the other hand, i.e. the effects of neoliberalism over 40 years? > "Economic transformation has been a big contributor. More than two-thirds of manufacturing workers are men; the sector has lost more than 5 million jobs since 2000. That’s a lot of unemployed men. Not just coincidentally, “deaths of despair” — those caused by suicide, overdose…

What you're describing is fundamentally the disappearance of the middle class.

Historically, an economic middle class is a relatively recent phenomenon. For ages past and across cultures, there were "rich" and "poor" and relatively few in between.

What created the middle class in the US was a government system that restricted the power of the elites to abuse that power. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal". I.e. the rich, powerful, government, or otherwise privileged people ought not to have rights that the poor do not have.

I think the disappearance of the middle class today is largely due to favoritism and miscarriage of justice in government -- like failing to prosecute gross economic crimes adequately (embezzling, insider trading, monopolism, etc.). I don't think rich people are bad by definition, but I do think our government tends to show favoritism to them.

EDIT:

Lest I sound like I'm coming down on conservatives only, liberals in the US have also been hugely responsible for the disappearance of the middle class. The bipartisan post-WWII GI bill, signed by FDR, severely disadvantaged African-American veterans in how it was carried out - by disproportionately denying applications by African-American veterans for housing.

In the decades that followed, Democrat welfare programs provided significantly more total income to 2 divorced adults with kids than a family with 2 married, cohabiting parents -- thus encouraging men to move out so their family could have more welfare money, and (broadly speaking) causing an entire generation of children in poor (and especially African-American families) to grow up without a dad in the home. This lead to further poverty, crime, drug addiction, and ultimately devastation.

Clinton's "war on drugs" and his three-strikes rule only made the problem worse by merely prosecuting and imprisoning people in poverty instead of working to repair the root causes of their behavior. This resulted in many more fatherless families.

Upholding the rights of the poor is everyone's responsibility, especially those in government, regardless of their political affiliation.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#48

Post by danbolt »

ok_dad wrote: post #16
decafninja wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do many married men really want that kind of life though? It's one thing to be single and roaming the world carefree. But my observation has been that most men who are married, especially if with children, have some innate desire to provide for the family and not being able to do so (due to unemployment, underemployment, etc.) causes them stress even if the wife is earning more than enough. Those that don't seem to b…

Personally, I would love to quit working and take care of my family at home. I find much more joy in that than working a programming career. I think a lot of men have been conditioned to think we have to be the provider much like women have been conditioned to think they have to be a homemaker.

Agreed; I think a lot of the shame deviating from that is both internalized and external.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#49

Post by zozbot234 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #29

> As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Conversely: as young men's potential future employability rises, their romantic prospects also decline. That is - the men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.

Surely one's romantic prospects should not be set in the teenage years. Or even be affected all that much by contingent employment status, when future potential might be far more relevant.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#50

Post by tomjakubowski »

commandlinefan wrote: post #29

> As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Conversely: as young men's potential future employability rises, their romantic prospects also decline. That is - the men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.

Interesting. I'm just one person, but: I've enjoyed stable employment as a programmer since I was 23, and my teenage years and early 20s were easily my most socially (and romantically) active, and I rarely felt lonely then. I've felt most lonely in my late 20s and early 30s.

I sometimes wonder if my career destroyed my ability to make and keep friends.

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